Essentials and Treasure Parcels Analyzed

[BobTheNob]

You know what would help with this? DDI website updated with a new tool for subscribers that does the randomization for you. A nice versatile thing that can even pick a random piece of equipment.

 

[occam]

I love having the random treasure option back again. The treasure parcel system was giving me fits trying to plan adventures for my group, in which players drop in and out frequently, PCs may be of somewhat different levels, etc. Do I include an extra parcel or not, if over the course of gaining a level the size of the party changes? The parcel system is very fiddly.

In addition, if you're doing any kind of sandboxing, you don't want to preplan all your treasure placement. Now you could just keep a list of magic items in a queue to hand out, and even roll up the treasure as it's found, trusting to statistics (and perhaps occasional treasure audits) to keep the distribution in line over time.

This also goes for standard dungeon adventures (essentially a subset of sandboxing), in which PCs may run into more or fewer encounters than you had expected, changing the rate of level advancement, thus affecting whether you've planted enough parcels per level... blech! It can be done, but it's easier if you can just roll up a 2nd-level treasure instead of a 1st-level one if they get there before you expected.

Edit: Oh yeah, I also love the randomness!

 

[Colmarr]

You're using faulty logic here..

So for new players, this treasure parcel system (for good or ill) may be the only one they are familiar with.

What he said (which is what I said, but perhaps better framed).

The fact that a player does not know something is a replacement doesn't mean it's not a replacement (if indeed it is).

This isn't a "tree falls in the woods" or Schroedinger's Cat situation.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Does anyone know if wizard's adventures (keep on the shadowlands etc) have their encounters done right so that you could use this system to quickly and easily replace their woeful treasure?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

No random tables for magic items in the Rules Compendium. The new direction seems to be for more random tables, though, so here's hoping we see some in the future.



I throw it out. Rerolling would skew the results high.


Given the number of rolls involved, monetary treasure is going to tend towards average. I don't think you have to worry about the power spread for monetary treasure.

So why bother to roll? lol. This is what I don't get. If the 2 systems are statistically essentially identical then what really is the advantage of the random table? It just takes longer to deal with. Personally I just made a spreadsheet that had ALL of the treasures for level 1-30 in it. Then I just check them off as I give them out. Works awesome. If I really want some kind of random feel to it I can always just randomize the last couple digits of the size of each parcel so when I give it out it becomes 537gp or whatever. Don't really need DICE for that.

Magic items are more swingy with this approach, so if you're concerned about that, you should just award the standard 4 magic items per level (n+1..n+4) and ignore that line in the table. But you still have a lot of control over magic item power, even if you follow the tables exactly, because you still choose the specific items by hand.

So basically items aren't random since you choose them, and they really shouldn't be random in terms of if they appear or not either, since even with a good number of rolls you WILL get variations that can be significant. Someone calculated in another thread that there is a 5% chance per level of getting NO items at all. Maybe not show-stopping but I just don't get how it beats parcels.

@occam Hmmm, you're the first person I've ever heard suggest that there is any relationship between a sandbox and random treasure (or random anything really). Honestly I've run what I would consider heavily sandboxed games for 30 years and have ALMOST never used random treasures or random encounters. Certainly you CAN, but the two aren't particularly related.

I have no problem with people using whatever treasure system they like, of course. It would be nice if this not-a-new-version had both options.

 

[Badwe]

i have to admit i was looking for the other kind of randomness: being able to randomly select magic items. unfortunately this essentially means that wishlists are still a point around which the remaining treasure system is balanced which means to select magic items randomly can potentially unbalance the game by powering down the characters. In fact the ramifications might be more dire. to not find the item you're looking for in the parcel system is just a monetary setback: the item you're looking for can eventually be crafted if you find enough junk to shard. But with this, if you must disenchant your uncommon items, while you get 1/2 of it's value this is only going to allow for more common items, which currently is a rather slim list.


OTOH: I see a situation where this system can help some diehard MMO players out there reclaim some of that pseudo verisimilitude of loot tables in a sandbox adventure. Rather than a wishlist, the player finds out that the volcano fortress temple is full of fire beasts who drop some known (or partially known) list of gear that either deals fire damage or offers resistance (or some other locationally flavored thing). They go to the temple, they start killing things, when an item comes up they know there's a smaller list of things they could potentially find, and maybe the big bad is worth 3 treasure rolls instead of 1.


There was another post somewhere on enworld that intimated a way to make it ok to randomly select items in the current system and make it ok. Interestingly, he came to the conclusion that slightly bumping the power level of the items you give out and letting them disenchant for half made things roughly even out, which sounds remarkably similar to uncommon disenchanting for half and rares for full.

PS: is anyone else having difficulty not imagining the word UNCOMMON in green/silver text and the word RARE in blue/gold text?

 

[Tony Vargas]

If the person who needs treasure is only using Essentials (from the beginning and from here on out)... then they do not have the parcel system in their knowledge banks, and thus the random tables are not a replacement for anything.

So, 3.5 didn't replace 3.0, since some people started with 3.5 and those that started with 3.0 could just go on using 3.0 or take 3.5 as an additional option - nice to know.

 

[Badwe]

So, 3.5 didn't replace 3.0, since some people started with 3.5 and those that started with 3.0 could just go on using 3.0 or take 3.5 as an additional option - nice to know.

incongruous example, try again.

both options are absolutely available to be used. Look at LFR, do you expect all of their modules to be retrofitted to be random treasure? How would you verify the DM didn't cheat at say he rolled all 20s? Yes, people who are coming in on essentials will be unaware of the old way of doing things, but both methods are saying the same thing "if you complete level X, you should get roughly 4 items of level X+1 through x+4 and roughly X*Y gold".

 

[ki11erDM]

You know what would help with this? DDI website updated with a new tool for subscribers that does the randomization for you. A nice versatile thing that can even pick a random piece of equipment.

Like this:

Quartermaster - Asmor.com

I'll be shocked if they don't add it in really soon.

 

[nookiemonster]

PS: is anyone else having difficulty not imagining the word UNCOMMON in green/silver text and the word RARE in blue/gold text?

Actually, I see the names of rares in purple.